Allenhurst Unveils Main Street Redevelopment Plan
By GARRETT STASSE
Four years of talks and studies are over: Allenhurst will have its first-ever redevelopment plan.
The Planning Board sent a proposal to the Board of Commissioners that calls for the adaptive re-use of two key buildings, some housing, retail space and a park.
The commissioners are scheduled to review the recommendations this month.
It also asks Jersey Central Power & Light Co. to buffer its power substation and the commission to hire an environmental consultant to deal with ongoing pollution problems.
The latter was prompted when board member Frieda Shalam objected to any plan that does not guarantee the utilitys former office building, barn and other Main Street properties are free of pollutants. Two reports, one from 1999 and another from a month ago said toxins spilled years ago continue to be found in test wells despite JCP&Ls extensive cleanup in 1997.
Benzene, TBA and MTB were present 10 years ago on the barn property and in some cases are more prevalent now.
Some of them are still there and in higher levels, she said. Theyre in the oil and water and in alarmingly increasing quantities. They all cause cancer.
The redevelopment zone in and around the office complex, the barn, the former waterworks building and a group of houses south of the office building are in the redevelopment zone. The borough has been working on a package of plans to transform the district into residential and retail zones before asking developers for proposals. The toxins have been known for years, and JCP&L has removed soil, installed monitoring wells and hired an environmental engineering company to oversee the cleanup.
But Dr. Richard Fernicola said the substances might not be the utilitys fault. There had been a service station on Main Street just south of the liquor store, and its fuel tanks might have split.
The amount of cleanup depends on how the property is to be used. The state has two standards, one for commercial and stricter ones for residential use, board Chairman Joseph Tomaino said.
Shalam said the property has been zoned commercial for 100 years.
The plan to be forwarded to the commission calls for mixed-use residential/commercial in the office building, with about 7,000 square feet of retail or offices on the first floor and condominiums on the upper three floors. Planner Fred Heyer of Heyer & Gruel Associates, which devised the redevelopment uses, said the office building could be adapted.
He also said the barn property could become a park, and a portion of the lakefront park where the tennis courts and water tower are could become up to 10 single-family house lots. The board rejected the latter and voted to turn a 20-foot-deep stretch of the barn propertys 2.6 acres into a passive park and allow perhaps six single-family houses on the remainder.
The commission will decide how many housing units could be built.
Shalam was the lone dissenting vote.
I couldnt live with myself knowing people were going to live there, she said.
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